How do I find the right SEO firm to outsource to?
I'm looking for a really good SEO company that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Any ideas? I've already looked at Semalt (spelled right?) I like what they do but they are a little out of reach for me.
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Jul 1, 2015
Q-Online Ltd. is a performance based digital marketing agency in Surrey offering unrivalled knowledge and experience of various services within online marketing.
The company specialises in SEO marketing, pay per click advertising, local search marketing, social media marketing, strategic consultancy services, Web design & development, mobile and desktop applications.
We pride ourselves on providing excellent client experience and being both professional and 100% transparent with all our clients.
Our Experience
We have over 11 years’ experience of delivering digital marketing services in the UK.
Over the 11 years we have been offering digital marketing services to our clients from Automotive, Recruitment, Home Improvement, Real Estate, Security, Travel & Accommodation, Law, Life Style, Energy, Sports, Health, B2B, Consultancy and more..
The level of knowledge, experience and unique approaches at Q-Online has helped us achieve a 90% client retention rate.
Our Approach
• We work with you as part of your team.
• We focus on improving your business not just its visibility.
• 100 % manual optimisation
• We deliver emotional and innovative campaigns that are strongly aligned with business goals and that inexorably connect customers with brands.
We Guarantee
At Q-Online we guarantee all our clients
• 100% transparency
• Search market leadership with visibility above direct competition.
• YOY growth in traffic
High quality throughout the process
• Extra value for all our clients
If you are still looking for an SEO firm Q-online really offer a great service and have really good competitive prices all the details are on the website (shown below)
http://www.q-online.co.uk/
Jun 23, 2015
I recommend you find an SEO firm that is willing to stand by their claims of expertise.
To do this, you should pay them very well, but only on a performance basis.
This means paying based on the business results they generate for you. If they don't generate results, you pay little or nothing. If they do generate results, you pay them very well.
This way, you have no risk and you only pay for the results you get. To be fair to the SEO firm, though, you do need to pay very well for results.
Here are two ways to structure an arrangement like this:
1. The SEO firm gets paid on either a fixed fee per lead or a percentage of sales that are a direct result of their SEO work. Of course, this requires tracking but in many cases the SEO firm can set up the necessary analytics on your site where you can both keep track of this.
2. Ask the SEO firm to guarantee their results.
If they don't meet the objectives they promise, you pay little or nothing. If they meet or exceed the promised results each month, you pay well.
My recommendation is that the promised result is not related to better rankings. That in and of itself is a meaningless metric, in my view, because an improved ranking on its own is not a business result.
I would define the objectives along the lines of business results such as:
+ increase leads by X % per month
+ increase sales by X dollars or Y % per month
+ increase foot traffic into my business by X% per month
+ increase event attendees by X%
+ etc.
As with approach #1 above, in many cases the SEO firm can implement analytics to track the results that are directly attributable to their work.
Jun 13, 2015
If you are looking for an SEO Company or an agency, then definitely they will charge too much. I prefer you to hire a SEO freelancer. There are many Benefits of hiring a freelancer instead of hiring any agency like,
-A freelancer will focus on 2-3 project at a time, so he/she can focus on quality of work.
-You can reach him/her whenever you want, via skype or any other Phone or Chatting source.
-most of freelancer on Upwork offer money back guarantee.
-They will charge per.hour and you can stop or pause work whenever you want.
Jun 11, 2015
Be very wary of SEO firms. Recent changes to the Google algorithm have rendered them almost obsolete. To rank high these days, you are much better to have really focused content and ensure that it is written in a way that matches the questions that your ideal prospects are likely to ask. Also make sure that your web site is mobile responsive- this is now a big part of ranking.
Finally take the time to write fresh content - ideally weekly. This is best done by publishing blog articles, case studies and/or testimonials. Not something that takes a huge amount of research or effort, but make sure that it is relevant to the theme of your site.
Jun 11, 2015
Honestly if you're looking for good SEO, cheap does not equate into that. SEO is expensive for a reason. It's a specialty that not anybody can just pick up, learn, and start doing it. Places like Semalt just use completely spammy tactics to get you "ranking" quickly. Then, after a few months, your rankings will dramatically decrease. If you're lucky enough to not get hit with a penalty because of their black hat services.
Many cheap SEO firms do things that are unsavory to get you ranking. This, in the long run, is not going to help your site in the least. I would say by looking for "cheap SEO", you've already dug your own grave there. The cheapest package for SEO that we start with is $750 a month. We provide a great service for that cost. And THAT is CHEAP in this industry for the amount of service we provide to our clients.
In this industry, you really get what you pay for. If someone is telling you that they can rank you 1st page on Google for under 500$ a month, they're either lying to you or they're talking about just local SEO on the map pack.
There are many tools out there that you can use to help you with onsite as well as (some) offsite work. Many of which are free. But when it comes to actual strategy for your industry, semantic indexing, reverse indexing, local and national branding, integration with social media, and so much more, you'll only get that from someone who really knows what they're doing in SEO. And I promise you they will not come cheap.
Jun 11, 2015
Agree with you completely. It's really difficult to find a good and knowledgeable SEO agency from such a chaotic market place. Here's what i think could be useful to keep in mind while recruiting an SEO agency (assuming you know a fair bit of SEO):
Basic Questions:
1. How long has your company been in the SEO business? You are looking for historical perspective. A company that has been doing SEO for 1-5 years as opposed to 10+ years is not as strong as a company who’s been through every Search Engine algorithmic update.
2. How do you differ from your competitors? Each company has a different philosophy when it comes to handling SEO for their clients. Some are full service SEO agencies who handle everything from consulting to implementation, others consult and do not handle implementation and some outsource or focus only on social.
3. Are your services all inclusive? Again, varies company by company – many companies have different offerings which they use to upsell you year over year while there are a few who will provide an all inclusive service.
4. How many hours and heads do you get for your account? You are looking for value here as many companies put 3-5 people on the paper but each individual may end up spending only 10% of their time on your account with remainder of time spent on other accounts.
5. Name the individuals who will work on my account. Then Google them to see what their experience and expertise is like online. Any SEO worth his/her salt will be highly visible online. There’s no such thing as a below the radar SEO (at least not in the agency world).
Technical Questions:
If the vendor doesn’t know the answer to any of these questions, its a deal breaker.
1. How do you optimize a multi-regional multi-language website? Implement Hreflang.
2. What is a reverse index? 99% of SEOs don’t know this answer – Check to see if the agency bullshits you or is honest.
3. Name the 6 most important link characteristics that Search Engines value:
IP Diversity
Anchor Text
Topical Relevance
Niche Relevance
Geographic Relevance
Link Weight/PR
4. What is negative SEO and how do you prevent it? Negative SEO is the act of using SEO to prevent a website or certain URLs from showing up in Search Engines. It’s easy to prevent through Google Webmaster Tools or if you have a strong brand but if you have neither then can get very difficult.
5. Can Google crawl iframes? If no, then how do you get Google to crawl iframes? Answer is no, it can’t be crawled but this issue can be bypassed through the use of an XML or HTML sitemap.
Hope this helps !
Cheers
Sunal Jain
Jun 11, 2015
Also, Google is absolutely capable of crawling iFrames on your website. You can set up SEO friendly iFrames on your webpages. iFrames can cause issues on search engines, but that doesn't mean Google can't crawl them at all.
Jun 10, 2015
I would be careful when using the acronym SEO. 5 years ago this term had a very different meaning. I am assuming your primary objective is to build traffic, convert that traffic into leads, nurture those leads and close new business. This process demands an "Inbound Marketing" strategy, not an SEO strategy. A better way to put that would be to say that SEO is only a piece of a good online marketing strategy but if SEO is all you implement, you will have a very hard time overtaking serious competition.
Think about your website like a city. You want a New York City, not an Anytown USA. The difference is building channels and sources that attract prospects. NYC has so many different ways to get in like airports, highways, tunnels, trains, back roads whereas Anytown USA has one traffic light (SEO).
Does that make any sense?
Jun 11, 2015
Part of SEO is specific to what you're talking about. It's not just building links and getting Google to rank your site anymore. It's about user experience, site accessibility, generating traffic from multiple referrals from different states, content development and marketing, social media integration, etc. The primary objective to an SEO strategy now is to give ROI to your client. This means converting traffic, building traffic, give potential customers a reason to be on the page by optimizing content, etc. If you want to really optimize a website for search, you need to be doing all of those things. If it's all for the sake of search optimization, well then that would be SEO.
Jun 10, 2015
Hi, you can also post your project, along with your budget, here: http://www.mosaichub.com/user/hirerequest/add and we can help you find the right fit.
Jun 10, 2015
You can try people per hour portal. It is very famous for freelancers from around the world.
Jun 10, 2015
What specifically are you after? We may be able to help......depending on your definition of "an arm and a leg", of course ;-)
Jun 10, 2015
We need to come up on the first page on search engines So SEO, we have a website but I am not getting the results I want. I've tried everything I can think of myself but I realize I may need outside help. How much do you charge and then I can tell you if its too much for our small agency to handle.
Sunal, it seems like you're stuck in SEO from a couple of years ago. You mention reverse index on here. This is simply a phrase associated to keyword research. Simply knowing what reverse indexing is does not mean you're going to be good at SEO. Also, the metrics at which search engines rank now has changed dramatically since 2013. Page Rank for example really doesn't mean much anymore. One of the most important things that search engines look for that you left out is site accessibility to Google and other search engines as well as site speed. Also referring domains is more important now than IP diversity. Topical and Niche relevance is specific to content.
You should be asking SEO's more questions such as:
1. How will you integrate schema in my site, and does it make sense to mark-up as a national organization or a local business?
2. What other rich data can I expect to see from search?
3. Will you optimize my knowledge graph?
4. Do you integrate with social?